


JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT 


BY 

GEORGE PARKER YVINSHIP, A. M. 



From Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, at the 
Semi-Annual Meeting, April 25, 1900. 



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Worcester, |Ua,$£. t Ht. jl. 

PRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 

3 11 MAIN S T R E E T . 

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SOME FACTS ABOUT JOHN ANI) SEBASTIAN CABOT, 


A crew of English sailors, in the midsummer of the year 
14h7, brought their little craft up the Severn and alongside 
one of the old Bristol wharves. In replv to the Greetings 

1 O o 

of those who welcomed them home, thev announced that 
they had sailed through shoals of countless fish to a land on 
the further side of the North Atlantic. 1 Ten months later 
their commander, the Italian merchant adventurer John 
Cabot, sailed away again from these same Bristol wharves, 
in charge of five ships carrying men and goods suitable for 
the exploration and settlement of the western lands he had 
visited a year before. Three or four vears after this, 
in 1502, an expedition was fitted out by some Bristol 
merchants and sent to the new world. Almost nothing 1 is 
known about this adventure,—as to why it was projected, 
its intended destination, or what came of it; but it is a 
reasonable surmise that the expedition was sent to search 
for some traces of the fleet which John Cabot had led 


1 A1 ditto messer Zoanne ... li compagni chi sono quasi tutti inglesi, et (la 
Rristo— et affermanno che quello mare e coperto (le pessi li quali se preiulenno 
non solo cum la rete, ma cum le ciste, essendoli alligato uno saxo ad cio che la 
cista se impozi in laqua, et questo io lho oldito narrare al dicto messer Zoanne. 
Et ditti Inglesi suoi compagni dicono che portaranno tanti pessi che questo regno 
non havera piu bisogno de Islanda, del quale paese vene una grandissima mercantia 
de pessi che si chiamanno stochfissi. From the second dispatch regarding Cabot 
sent by Raimondo di Soncino to the Duke of Milan, dated from London, 18 Decem¬ 
ber, 1497, as printed in Harrisse, J. et S. Cabot, pp. 324, 325. It has frequently 
been translated into English, and may be found in most modern books about the 
Cabots. There is repeated evidence of the impression made upon the earliest 
English visitors by the vast shoals of llsh which frequented the western Atlantic 
from Cape Cod to Labrador. See note post, p. 19. The descriptions in Peter Martyr, 
Ramusio, and even in the legends to the Cabot 1544 map, were probably derived 
from the experiences of voyages subsequent to this one of 1497. 




I 


4 

westward in 1498, and from which no news had then, nor 
has since, been received. 1 

Eighty years later, in 1580-84, Dr. John Dee and 
Richard Hakluyt undertook to stir up the English people, 

1 The statement in the contemporary Cronicon regum Anglia ?, that the fleet of 
1498 “ departed from the West Cuntrey in the begynnyng of Somer, but to this 
present moneth came nevir knowlege of their exployt,” is as true now as when it 
was first written. Information in regard to the voyage of 1502 or 1503 consists at 
present of little besides the charters which authorized the undertaking. Letters 
patent were granted by Henry VII., dated 19 March, 1501-2, to three Bristol mer¬ 
chants—Ward, Ashehurst and Thomas—and three Portuguese from the Azores, 
authorizing them in the usual terms to venture whithersoever they pleased: 
plenam ac liberam auctoritatem, facultatem et potestatem committimus navi- 
gandi et se transferendi ad omnes partes, regiones et fines Maris Orientalis, Occi- 

dentalis, Australis, Borealis et Septentrionalis_ad inveniendum, recuperandum, 

discoperiendum et investigandum Insulas, patrias, Regiones sive provincias quas- 
cunque Gentilium et Infidelium in quacunque Mundi parte positas quae Christianis 
omnibus ante haec tempora fuerunt et in praesenti sunt incognita. In the similar 
grant to John Cabot and his three sons, dated 5 March, 1495-6, they are given 
authority: navigandi ad omnes partes, regiones et sinus maris Orientalis, occi- 

dentalis et Septentrionalis_etc. Frequent attention has been called to the 

probably significant omission in the charter of 1496 of permission to explore 
towards the south, the region in which Spain had already found the way to her 
new world empire. See the text, carefully transliterated from the original manu¬ 
script, in Weare, Cabot's Discovery , pp. 96-97. In the draft of the charter of 
1501-2 occurs the curious passage, the meaning of which has been often discussed, 
securing to the Anglo-Portuguese syndicate possession in whatever they might 
discover: “ Et quod nullus... eos eorurn aliquem de et super possessione et titulo 
suis— aliqualiter contra voluntatem suam expellat quovis modo sen aliquis extra - 
neus aut aliqui extranei virtute aut colore alicujus concessionis nostrrn sibi Magno 
Sigillo Nostro per antea factae.” See Biddle, Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, p. 318, 
where this charter was first printed. It is a reasonable supposition that the 
strangers referred to, who had previously received grants, were the Cabot family. 

The evidence that a voyage was made in accordance with this patent of 1502 
consists of an entry, under date 1502, in Fabyan’s Chronicle, as quoted by Stow, 
Chronicle, 1580 edition, p. 875: “Thys yeare were brought vnto the Kyng three men 
taken in the new founde Hands, by Sebastian Gabato, before named in Anno 1468 
[misprinted for 1498], these men were clothed in Beastes skinnes, and eate raw Flesh, 
but spake such a language as no man could vnderstand them”.... This evidence 
is apparently confirmed by the fact that, on 9 December, 1502, a second charter was 
issued to the same persons, with the addition of another Bristol merchant, Hugh 
Elliott. The venturers returned about the middle of September, for Fernandez 
and Gonsalvez received pensions from the English crown by a grant dated 26 
September, 1502. The entries in the Privy Purse expenses record payments on 
24 September, 1502, “ to the merchants of Bristol that have been in the New¬ 
found-land, £20”; and on 7 January, 1502-3, “ to men of Bristol that found the Isle, 
£5.” There is also a warrant, dated 6 December, 1503, for the payment of the 
pension of £10 yearly to each granted in September, 1502, to Fernandez and Gon¬ 
salvez, or Guidisalvus as his name was now spelt, “ in consideration of the true 
service they have done to us to our singular pleasure as captains unto the New 
Found Land.” See Beazley, Cabot, pp. 118-122. Mr. Beazley overlooks the 
obvious possibility that the young Sebastian Cabot may very likely have accom¬ 
panied Fernandez or Gonsalvez, in some minor station. There is nothing improba¬ 
ble in the statement of Fabyan that Sebastian was selected to present the American 
natives to the King. 



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;ind especially England’s Virgin Queen, to take an interest 
and a share in the exploitation of America. As the basis 
of all their arguments, after the obvious opportunities for 
a profitable adventure, they set forth the fact that the 
northern portions of the continent belonged to England bv 
right, because they had been discovered by John Cabot. 1 
Three hundred years after this, in 1889, one of the 
Justices on the bench of the Superior Court of the City 
of New York ordered the Manhattan Elevated Railroad 
Company to pay heavy damages for the depreciation in 
the value of property along its lines on the Bowery, 
because John Cabot brought the English civil law to this 
part of the world before the arrival of Henry Hudson, in 
the hold of whose vessel lurked the Dutch Roman Law. 2 


' Dr. Dee’s map, which was prepared, apparently, for the eye of the queen, is in 
the British Museum. The only reproduction of which I am aware is a photographic 
copy, the size of the original, made for Mr. Fred W. Lucas of London, and very 
generously placed by him at my disposal. On the hack of the map is written : “ A 
brief Remembrance of sundry forein Regions, Discovered, inhabited, and partly 
Conquered by the Subiects of this Brytisli Monarchic.” Two of the reasons justi¬ 
fying the British claim are: “2. Circa an. 1494. M[ Robert Thorn his father, and 

Mr Eliot of Bristow discovered Newfownd Land_ 4. Circa an. 1497. Sebastian 

Caboto, sent by King Henry the seventh did Discover the Newfownd Land, so far 
along and abowt the Coasts next to Laborador tyll he came to the Latitude of .07.1. 
And styll fownd the Seas open before him.” A short time before writing this, on 
28 November, 1577, according to his Diary, which was printed by the Camden 

Society in 1842, Dr. Dee “ Spake with the Quene hora quinta- declared to the 

Quene her title to Greenland, Estotilaml, and Friseland.” 

Hakluyt’s “ particuler discourse concerning_ Westerne discoueries ” was 

written in 1584, “at the requeste and direction of the riglite worshipfull 
Mr Walter Rag-lily now Knight.” It was not printed until 1877, when Dr. Leonard 
Woods and Charles Deane edited it for the Maine Historical Society. In the third 
chapter, p. 19, Hakluyt wrote that “ the contries therefore of America where unto 
we have just title, as beinge tirste discovered by Sebastian Gabote, at the coste of 
that prudent prince Kinge Henry the Seaventli.” Mr. Deane also notes, on p. 194, 
that “ in Chapter XVIII of this Discourse, Hakluyt examines the title of England 
to this territory, and, as will be seen, relies principally on the discovery by the 
Cabots.” The chapter in question contains an extract from Ramusio, which refers 
to Cabot’s discovery of the Northwest passage. Another instance is referred to 
in the following note. 

- The decision of Justice C. 11. Truax in the case of Mortimer et al. v. New York 
Elevated Railroad Company et al., which was recalled to my notice by Dr. Iv. (’. 
Babcock of the University of California, is in the Reports of Cases in the Superior 
Court of the City of New York.—New York, 1890, lvi. (Jones and Spencer, xxv.) 
259-271. It appears that the counsel for the Elevated companies had been in the 
habit of pleading, in suits for damages brought by owners of property along the 
lines of the Elevated structure, that prior to 1604 the land of the Bowery street 
was owned absolutely in fee by the Dutch government of Manhattan island. It 
would seem as if the court made up its mind to produce a decision which should 




() 


In the summer of 1497, when John Cabot came back 
from his successful westward voyage, there were several 
Italian and Spanish gentlemen, diplomatic agents and 
active, intelligent merchants, residing in England. These 
gentlemen heard the news of the town, and they promptly 
despatched to their masters, patrons and brethren, letters 
containing long accounts of the stories which were circu- 
bating in regard to the new discoverv, and of their efforts 
to learn the truth in regard thereto. These letters were 
filed away in due course in the public and private archives 
at Seville, Venice and Milan, where they awaited the 
curious researches of modern historical investigators. 1 

John Cabot disappeared from sight in 1498, but he left 
behind him a son, Sebastian, who talked freely, and per¬ 
haps not always discreetly, about his own and his father’s 
exploits. The men who knew Sebastian personally— 


put an end to this very bothersome argument. Judge Truax stated that “ the 
English always claimed this portion of North America by right of prior discovery 

of this country by John and Sebastian Cabot_ The English claimed, and began 

to claim shortly after this time, that the Cabots hail visited the whole coast from 
Florida up to Labrador”; the cited authority being Edward Hayes’ account of 
Gilbert’s voyage, written in 1583 and copied from Hakluyt in Payne; Elizabethan 
Seamen. “ In 1498 Sebastian Cabot sailed westward until he came to what is now 
Newfoundland. From there he proceeded to the mainland, made several landings, 
dealt with the natives, and followed the coast southward, probably as far as Chesa¬ 
peake Bay.” Bancroft, Valentine’s History of Neiv York , and Harris’s, Voyage,s, 
1705. Supplementary authorities cited are Lossing’s Encyclopaedia , Roberts in 
the American Commonwealth Series, Fernow in the Narrative and Critical History, 
Mr. Gerard in his Titles to Rea! Estate, and the Supreme Court of the United States 
in Martin v. Waddell , 1G Peters, 408. 

1 It is most unlikely that the few letters which have been brought to light during 
the last fifty years are all that were written about the Cabot discovery in the 
autumn of 1497. Of the letters now known, that of Lorenzo Pasqualigo to his 
brothers in Venice, dated in London, 2.3 August, 1497, was first printed, in Italian, 
in 1837, and in English in 185G; the dispatch of Rairaondo di Soncino to the Duke 
of Milan, dated 24 August, 1497, was first printed in English in 18G4, and in Italian, 
said to be translated from the earlier English version, in 1880; another dispatch 
from Soncino to Milan, dated 18 December, 1497, was printed in Italian in 18GG, and 
translated into English by Professor Nash, for Winsor’s, Narrative and Critical 
History, in 1884; a report by Pedro de Ayala to the Spanish government, dated 25 
July, 1498, together with the covering dispatch by Ayala’s superior, Buy Gonzales 
de Puebla, was first deciphered and turned into English in 1862, and a Spanish text, 
presumably worked out from the original cipher dispatch, was printed in 1882; 
there is record of an earlier dispatch from Gonzales de Puebla to Ferdinand and 
Isabella, dated 21 January, 149G, in which he mentioned Cabot, but this document 
has not yet been found. 



i 


Peter Martyr of Angleria, Francisco Gomara, Giovanni 
Ramusio and Richard Eden—recorded in their published 
volumes the impressions which they received from their 
conversations with him. Some of these conversations, we 
have reason to suspect, were held over the nuts and raisins 
of a good dinner; others took place, we know, in the 
course of social chat at a house party in Northern Italy; 
still others we may fancy on the comfortable benches of 
some cheery Spanish tap-room. 1 A certain amount of 


1 Raimondo di Soncino’s delightful account, at the end of his December, 1497, 
letter, recounting what he had found out about John Cabot’s plans, is printed in 
most books about Cabot. He tells of the ten and twelve course dinners, keeping 
him at table three hours at a stretch, which he was obliged to endure in order to 
And out what his master wished to know. The tantalizing “ conversation with an 
anonymous guest at the house of Hieronimo Fracastor ” at Caphi near Verona, is 
in the first volume of Ramusio’s Collection of Voyages, 11. 414 D - 415 A. It has 
been discussed more elaborately, and with less appreciation of the actual value of 
the information afforded, than any other single piece of Cabotian literature. As 1 
have said in my Cabot, Bibliography, p. 85; the style in which this conversation is 
recorded, the apparently direct personal intercoui’se between the several communi¬ 
cants of the information, the use of the rhetorical present tense which seems to 
give the exact words used by Cabot, the evident respectability and authority of the 
unnamed gentleman, and even the ostentatious disavowal of any pretensions to 
exact recollection—all these tend to obscure the absolute unreliability of the 
entire passage. The length of time that had elapsed, the absence of anything that 
might have fixed the specific details clearly in the memory, the very eminence of 
individuals which has so often been held to relieve them from the necessity of 
detailed exactness, the essential levity of the occasion when Ramusio received the 
information, all these considerations need to be kept clearly in mind, together with 
the most important fact of all, that Cabot, the Mantuan gentleman, and Ramusio, 
were each, on every occasion when the information was transmitted, chiefly 
interested in something—the best way to reach the Spice Lands from Europe— 
which had only the slightest connection with the details about Sebastian’s birth¬ 
place, his share in the voyage of 1497, and the other Cabotian questions over which 
modern historical controversies have raged. 

Another glimpse of social life, on the outskirts of the Spanish Court, is afforded 
by Caspar Contarini’s letters to the Council of Ten at Venice, written in 1522 and 
1523 in which he tells of trying to find out whether Sebastian Cabot was in attend¬ 
ance on the court at Valladolid, and where he was living, and of Cabot’s subsequent 
call upon him, while he was at dinner on Christmas Eve. Contarini’s letters have 
been translated into English by Sir Clements Markham, for the Hakluyt Society, 
and may be consulted in Mr. Raymond Beazley’s Cabot volume in the series of 
“ Builders of Greater Britain.” 

Ramusio corresponded with Sebastian Cabot in regard to certain geographical 
questions, and also, in all probability, about some property said to have been left 
by Cabot’s mother, the settlement of which was entrusted by the Venetian Council 
of Ten to Ramusio (see note post , p. 14). Peter Martyr (see note 1 post, p. 18), 
and Gomara were both engaged in duties about the Spanish Court for several years 
when Cabot was in the Spanish service. All of Eden’s books contain evidence of 
his intimate acquaintance with the “ woorthy owlde man yet lyuing Sebastian 
Cabote,” at whose deathbed heattended. 



8 


confusion resulted in the subsequent recollections. 1 
Toward the end of the fifteenth century, Richard Hakluyt 
noticed this lack of agreement in the published sources of 
information about Cabot, and when he set about the 
preparation of his great Collection of Voyages, one of his 
first tasks was an attempt to straighten out these contra¬ 
dictory narratives. He was misled into several erroneous 
statements at first, but in the end he succeeded in finding 
out verv nearly what we now recognize as the truth in 
regard to the English discoverv of America. The important 
facts are stated bv Hakluvt, in nearly everv instance cor- 
rectly. 3 For a hundred and fifty years there was no 


1 The best illustration of this confusion is in Ramusio’s report of the conversa¬ 
tion at Caphi. Ramusio wrote that his informant quoted Sebastian as saying: 
that his father, John Cabot, died about the time that the English court began 
to discuss the news of Columbus’s discovery, and that as he felt a desire to achieve 
something equally great, he induced Henry VII. to furnish him with two small 
ships, with which in the early summer of 149G, lie followed the American coast 
northward to 56° where it turned toward the east, and that he thence turned 
back and sailed down the coast as far as Florida. Returning to England, he found 
the country in the throes of civil rebellion and war with Scotland, so that he 
ottered his services to Ferdinand and Isabella, who sent him on a voyage of dis¬ 
covery to the coast of Brazil. It is supposed that this last sentence contains 
references to Perkin Warbeck’s rebellion in June, 1497; to the truce with James 
IV. of Scotland in September of the same year; to Sebastian’s arctic expedition 
of 1509; to his employment by Ferdinand of Spain, Isabella having died in 1504, 
in 1512; and his voyage to Ea Plata in 1526. It is comparatively easy to under¬ 
stand how this confusion arose; it is far more difficult to understand how men 
of considerable historical reputations have convinced themselves that this 
narrative is an important source whence they might derive exact and accurate 
information. 

- In his Divers Voyages, imprinted at London in 1582, Hakluyt published the 
Letters Patent of 5 March, 1495-6 (misprinted 1594 in the side-note to the English 
translation); the “ note out of Fabyan ” referring correctly to the 1498 voyage and 
to the three savages presented to the King in 1502; and Ramusio’s abstract of a 
letter from Sebastian Cabot regarding his voyage to G7|° north ; together with the 
important information that Cabot’s papers were then extant in the possession of 
William Worthington. In addition to these documents and extracts, lie printed in 
the Principal! Navigations of 1589 an abstract of the patent granted by the King 
in February, 1498, the text of which was not recovered until Biddle published it in 
1831, thereby proving the probability that there was a Cabot voyage immediately 
following the discovery; an extract from the Cabot map, giving the date 1494 for 
the discovery; the conversation with Ramusio’s anonymous gentleman; the 
accounts of Cabot’s Arctic Voyage, written by Peter Martyr and (iomara; and the 
account of the voyage of Cabot and Pert in 1516. In the “note out of Fabyan,” 
the text is corrected by inserting the name of John Cabot as the leader of the 
expedition, although in this and also in the enlarged edition of 1600, the name of 
Sebastian is carelessly retained in the heading. These passages are all reprinted 
in the third volume of the Voyages , published in 1600, with the correction of the 
date to 1497 in the extract from the Cabot 1544 map, Hakluyt did not pretend to 



9 


occasion to question the accuracy of the facts as placed on 
record by Hakluyt. 

In 1753, the British Commissioners appointed to confer 
with the French representatives, in accordance with the 
Treaty of Utrecht, drew up a plain, straightforward state¬ 
ment of facts upon which, by the right of discovery, 

England based her claim to North American territory. 

• 

They set out, clearly and without thought of guile, so far 

as can be judged, the facts in regard to the discovery made 

by John Cabot in 1497. Their report was based merely, 

and entirely, upon Hakluyt and the authors whom Hakluyt 

had used. The facts as given in this report are the facts 

which, after another century and a half of prolonged 

interest in Cabotian problems, are now thought to be the 

actual truth as to John Cabot's achievements. A careful 

reexamination of the report reveals almost nothing which 

has since been proven to be untrue in connection with the 

discovery of 1497. In reply to this Memoir, however, 

the French Commissioners, in 1 757, published some 

Remarks, in the form of a commentary, which are a model 

of diplomatic argumentation and logical subtleties. 

Making use of all the devices of argumentation and 

sophistical logic, the Frenchmen pointed out that there 

are conflicting statements in regard to what John Cabot 

actually accomplished. They observed that the various 

early treatises do not always agree in the date of the 

discovery. They made much of the fact that there is 
«/ * 

confusion in some of the narratives in assigning the credit 

C O 

for the successful voyage to John or to Sebastian. In 
brief, the French negotiators undertook to depreciate the 
value and the effect of the English argument. They 
succeeded, as Frenchmen are apt to succeed, and the 
reader of their commentary finishes it with a strong im- 


provide a connected narrative in any of his publications, but he merely set forth 
the sources of information as lie found them, editing them so as to assist the 
reader, and, as will be seen in a subsequent note, post, p. 18, correcting errors which 
seemed to him obvious. 



10 




pression that everything is exactly the reverse of what the 
Englishmen had said it was. 1 

CD 

The work of the French diplomats of 1 757 naturally 
met with approval on the continent. French historical 


1 Three volumes of the Memoires ties Commissaires — Sur les Possessions & 
les droits respectifs des deux Couronnes en Amerique were printed in 1755, and, in 
several editions, are frequently met with. The fourth volume, the Cabotian 
interest of which was brought to my attention by Mr. Henry N. Stevens of London, 
was published in 1757, and is found only in the original official French quarto 
edition. This volume contains the “ Second Memoire des commissaires Anglois, 
Sur les Limites de l’Acadie, Du 23 Janvier, 1753. Avec Les Observations des 
Commissaires du Roi, en Reponse.” This is signed, p. 513, at “ Paris, 23d January, 
1753,” by Mildmay, Ruvigny, de Cosne; and the French commentary is, p. 538, 
“ Fait a Paris le premier juin mil sept cent cinquante-six. Signe De Silhouette.” 
The remainder of the volume, pp. 539-654, is occupied by a list of authorities cited 
by the English commissioners and illustrative documents added by the French 
representatives Article XXIV., pp. 458-470, is a reply by the English side to 
the “ historical summary Account of the first Voyages made by the English 
and French for the Discovery and Settlement of North-America,” which 
formed part of the first French Memoire, in this official edition, 1755, vol. L, 
pp. 10-37. Several paragraphs in this Article are devoted to establishing the sig¬ 
nificance of the discovery made in 1497 by John Cabot, a Venetian in the service of 
England, accompanied by joint Adventurers, native Subjects and Merchants of 
England. “ It is admitted that England did not set a great value at first upon the 
discovery made in 1497, nor was it for many years carried any farther.” It is shown 
that the north-west passage is not so much as mentioned in the commission under 
which Cabot sailed, and the discovery is claimed to confer a right to the territory 
from Florida to 58° northern latitude. In their observations, pp. 470-496, the French 
commissioners begin by discussing the navigation and discoveries of Sebastian 
Cabot, whose name was not mentioned by the Englishmen. They then proceed: 
“ On peut, avec raison, clever plus d’un doute, tant sur l’epoque de ce voyage que 
sur les terres qu’on pretend avoir ete aperyftes par Cabot dans le cours de sa 
navigation. Peut-etre meme n’est-il pas bien certain qu’il suit le premier qui les 
ait decouvertes. Pour se former de justes idees sur cette matiere, il est necessaire 
de discuter les diffcrentes pieces & les diiferentes autorites.” The spirit in which 
they went about their examination is admirably shown by the very first argument. 
The authorities, they say, are collected by Hakluyt in his third volume, in the 
section which is entitled “ Voyages, etc. (intended for the finding of a Northwest 
passage) to the North parts of America, to Meta incognita, and the backe-side of 
Gronland, as farre as 72 degrees and 12 minuts: performed first by Sebastian 
Cabota — ” “ Ce titre n’annonce le voyage de Cabot, que coinme un projet de 
navigation pour decouvrir le passage du nord-ouest, & non comme un projet pour 
etablir des colonies dans de nouvelles terres:”—as if Hakluyt’s heading settled the 
whole question. As a matter of fact, as will be seen, the statements in the heading- 
are probably exactly true, because an arctic voyage was made by Sebastian, 
although neither Hakluyt nor the negotiators of 1755 were aware of it. This 
titular argument is followed by one even more curious and ingenious, to wit, that 
the abstract of the Letters Patent of 3 February, 1497-8, “apprend deux faits 
importans: le premier, qu’en 1498, Jean Cabot, pere de Sebastien Cabot, n’etait 
point encore mort; le second, que Cabot n’avoit point abandonne l’idee de son 
projet, mais qu’il ne l’avoit pas encore execute au commencement de 1498; que par 
consequent on n’en peut placer la date, ni en 1496, ni en 1497.” These two illustra¬ 
tions fairly represent the skilful ingenuity with which the next twenty pages of 
the volume are filled. 


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writers and makers of biographical dictionaries patriotically 
took up the work, and gave wider circulation to the views, 
positive and negative, set forth in this historical coup d'etat. 
These views, becoming the accepted historical tradition in 
France, spread across the channel, and exerted a con¬ 
siderable influence on English writers of the early part of 
the nineteenth century. Eventually, one of the French 

works fell into the hands of Richard Biddle, a Pittsburg, 

7 7 

Pennsylvania, lawyer, who had taken up his residence in 
England for the purpose of pursuing historical investiga¬ 
tions preparatory to writing a treatise on the progress of 
early discovery. Mr. Biddle read the account of the 
Cabots in the Biographic Universelle , and he immediately 
recognized that many of its statements were incorrect. 
Me determined to right a great historical injustice. He 
gathered authorities, drew up his brief, and in 1831 pub¬ 
lished his Memoir of Sebastian Cabot . 1 This volume 
corrected many of the errors in the earlier works, but Mr. 
Biddle, with a lawyer’s acumen, having once started out 
to correct, kept at it until he had revised very nearly 
everything in his predecessors, whether it was right or 
wrong before he touched it. The confusion of 1755 
became worse confounded. Biddle’s work, however, was 
of the masterly, masterful sort, obviously one of those 
publications known technically as “an important contribu- 


1 11i< 1 flle’s Memoir was published in Philadelphia and London in 1831, and 
reissued in London in 1832 with one leaf cancelled. It immediately attracted much 
attention from the Reviews, and its influence is plainly seen in the increased space 
accorded to Cabot in historical and geographical treatises which appeared in the 
succeeding years. One statement in his preface, p. ii., is, if possible, even more true 
of what was published in consequence of his work than of what preceded it; that 

“ amidst a great deal of undeniably tine writing on the subject, (of the Cabots)_ 

it would seem to have secured to itself less than any other of patient and anxious 
labor. The task of setting facts right has been regarded as an unworthy drudgery, 
while an ambitious effort is witnessed to throw them before the public eye in all 
the fantastic shapes, and deceptive colouring, of error.” Biddle lavished an 
immense amount of painstaking research upon his volume, which is a mine of 
information from which succeeding writers have drawn material for which they 
have rarely given him due credit. The hopelessly confused manner in which Biddle 
presented his argument, the absence of chronological arrangement in the narra¬ 
tive and of any index, renders it extremely difficult to discover specific statements 
in his text, or to check the appropriations of other writers. 



1*2 


v 


tion,” and a due attention to preliminaries resulted in the 
acceptance of his argument by the reviewers, who pub¬ 
lished resume* of his opinions in the quarterlies and the 
principal magazines of that day. A powerful influence 
was thus created, which effectually dominated the histori¬ 
cal traditions of the succeeding generation. This influence 
culminated in the Remarkable Life of Sebastian written 
by Mr. Nicholls of the English Bristol, who carried the 
glorification of Sebastian Cabot almost to the point of 
sanctification. 1 Naturally, Mr. Nieholls’s book produced a 
reaction, which received an impetus from the finding, not 
long before its appearance, of the news letters and diplo¬ 
matic despatches sent from England to Spain and Italy in 
the year of John Cabot’s discovery. 2 This reaction found 
its first expression in an article published under the heading 
of " Our Golden Candlesticks ” in the Boston Daily 
Advertiser , in March, 1871, being Henry Stevens’s effective 
little critique reprinted with the title "Sebastian Cabot— 


1 This effort to “ clear away the misrepresentations with which ignorance, preju¬ 
dice, and malignity have overlaid his life and actions, and to bring out the man 
from the shroud in which oblivion had partially enwrapped him,” was published in 
1869. It was, Mr. Nicholls says, “ a labor of love ; for, like some glorious antique in 
an acropolis of weeds, he grew in beauty as we lifted off the aspersions which had 
been cast upon him, until, as the last stain was removed, and our loving work was 
done, he stood before us in the majesty of his true manhood.” An interesting pas¬ 
sage is that in which Mr. Nicholls, on p. 187, explains Eden’s account of Cabot’s 
death bed, on which “ the good olde man, in that extreme age, somewhat doted, and 
had not yet euen in the article of death, vtterly shaken of all worldlye vayne 
glorie ”: Eden’s Taisnierus, A very necessarie . . . Booke concerning Navigation, 
sig. 1. 3. “ Perchance Eden understood him not ... In the infinite ocean of the 
love of his Saviour he found no variation, but a solid data, from which neither 
length, or breadth, or depth, or height could separate him; which, passing all 
human understanding, was partially revealed in the glimpse which his dying eye 
caught of the Spirit World, beyond the river, and so, joyously and trustfully, like a 
chilli in his old age he sank to his rest.” 

-See note, unte, p. 6. Most of these first attracted attention when published in 
the Rolls Series of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Aff airs, from 
foreign archives. Mr. Bergenroth’s Spanish series began in 1862, and the first, vol¬ 
ume of Mr. Rawdon Brown’s collections from the libraries of northern Italy 
appeared in 18(54. “ The recent discovery in the Bibliotheque Imperial of a map of 
Cabot, dated 1544,” in which Mr. Nicholls found the key to the Cabotian enigma, 
which apparently justified his volume, took place in 1843, although Mr. Nicholls’s re¬ 
mark is justified by the fact that it was twenty years later before historical students 
began to realize the real significance of the information afforded by this carto¬ 
graphic record.—See Mr. Charles Deane’s remarks in the Proceedings of this 
Society for April, 1807, pp. 43-50. 



John Cabot = ().'* Not long after this, Henry Ilarrisse took 
up the subject, and produced his valuable Jean et SJtastien 
Cabot. A portion of this volume was expanded into that 
superb piece of work, Harrisse’s Discovery of North 
America , and the remainder, the biographical portion, 
grew into his John Cabot and Sebastian his Son , which 
appeared in season to add materially to the excitement of 
the Cabot quadrieentennial celebrations. 1 If Mr. Ilarrisse 
had lost his interest in the Cabots when he finished proof¬ 
reading this last volume, it is probable that it would have 
remained for a very long- while the definitive work on 
the subject—a most desirable situation. In it, Mr. Ilar¬ 
risse expressed decided opinions in regard to Sebastian’s 
character and achievements, but there was not sufficient 
evidence of personal animus to discredit seriously Mr. 
Ilarrisse’s judgment of that over-rated personage. As it 
happens, however, Mr. Ilarrisse had grown in fame, and 
in years, during the interval between his two Cabot vol¬ 
umes. Realizing his dominant position as the foremost 
authority on all that concerns the period of discovery, it 
mav be that Mr. Ilarrisse was nettled by the knowledge 
that certain writers of standing as scholars had not accepted 
his dicta as definitively determining the judgment of pos¬ 
terity. At any rate, his Cabot book soon gave birth to a 
flock of lesser writings, scattered in the periodicals of 
England, Germany, France and America, in which Mr. 
Ilarrisse asserted with increasing vehemence that Sebastian 
Cabot was one of the most unmitigated rascals of all history. 
It is, he contends, “ proved beyond cavil and sophistry that 
Sebastian Cabot was only an unmitigated charlatan, a 
mendacious and unfilial boaster, a would-be traitor to 
Spain, a would-be traitor to England.” 2 Such talk as 

1 The dates of publication are, respectively, 1882, 1892, and 189(5. 

2 These are the closing words of an article on “The Outcome of the Cabot Qua- 
tercentenary,” in the American Historical Revieir for October, 1898, Vol. IV., p. 61. 
1 am aware of few more instructive studies than that of the way in which the views 
of this master of historical learning gradually took shape, at first from increasing 



14 


this naturally counteracts itself. It is for some time effort 
to set things right once more, as tliev have not been right 
since 1755. 

John Cabot's earlier life is, so far as historical students 
are concerned, fairly well established. He was born in or 
near Genoa, somewhat before the middle of the fifteenth 
century. He moved to Venice, probably while still a young 
man, and there he married a woman whose property has 
occasioned her son considerable trouble. 1 This son, 


information, as his studies for his successive volumes made him more and more 
familiar with every intricacy of the subject, and then under increasing provocation 
when, his studies completed, he began to realize that he had not succeeded in con¬ 
vincing the scholarly world of the justness of his conclusions. Mr. Harrisse entered 
upon this second state of mind with the preparation of a series of articles, expanded 
from chapters in his John Cabot and Sebastian his Son, which were printed in 
Drapeyron’s Revue de Geoc/raphie in 1894-97. He next challenged the date June 24, 
declaring that the landfall could not have taken place on that day, in the Forum 
for June, 1897, XXIII., 462-475. Then came an animated controversy with Messrs. 
G. E. Weare and G. R. F. Prowse in Notes and Queries, for 26 June and 14 August, 
1897, 8th Series, XI. 501 and XU. 129-132, in which he convinced himself that the 
name Mathew as that of Cabot’s ship was a forgery of Cliatterton. His opinion that 
the landfall must have been on the Labrador coast was set forth in the Nachrichten 
of the Gottingen kgl. Gesellscliaft der Wissenscliaften for 1897, pp. 326-348. He 
found support for the belief that Cabot returned from his second voyage, in the 
so-called “ Cabot Roll,” which proves that Cabot’s pension was paid in 1499, in an 
article printed in the American Historical Review for April, 1898, III., 449-455. The 
latest of his Cabot publications of which I am aware is in the Transactions of the 
Royal Society of Canada for 1898, 2d Series, IV., Sec. II., 103-106, in rectification of 
some statements in which Dr. S. G. Dawson had disagreed with him. 

1 Sebastian’s supposed treachery to Spain and to England is inextricably mixed 
up with his efforts to secure from the Venetian authorities some acknowledgment 
of his claims to property derived from his mother: fii dato bona speranza de 
recuperar la dote di vostra madre, et ameda, according to the letter written from 
Venice in the name of Cabot’s Rhagusan friend, 28 April, 1523, in Harrisse’s J. et 
S. Cabot, 353. Nearly thirty years later the Council of Ten at Venice wrote to their 
ambassador in England, under date of 12 September, 1551, J. et S. Cabot, 361; 
quanto alia richiesta che vi e stata fata da quei Signori circa li crediti che pretende, 
e ricuperatione de beni, li risponderete che noi desideramo in tutto quello che 
potemo far cosa grata a quella Maesta, e a loro Signorie ma che non essendo il 
detto Caboto conosciuto da alcuno de qui, saria neccessario che esso medesimo 
venisse per giustificare la sua persona et le ragion sue, essendo quelle cose <1 i che 
si parla mol to vecehie. The same despatch bearer probably carried a letter of 
similar date from the Reverend Peter Vannes, the English Ambassador at Venice, 
to the Council of Edward VI.; “Touching Sebastian Cabot’s matter, concerning 
which the Venetian Ambassador has also written, he has recommended the same to 
the Seigniory, and in their presence delivered to one of their secretaries Baptista 
Ramusio, whom Cabot put in trust, such evidences as came to his hands. The 
Seigniory were well pleased that one of their subjects by service and virtue should 
deserve the [English] Council’s good will and favour; and although this matter is 
about 50 years old, and by the death of men, decaying of houses and perishing of 
writings, as well as his own absence, it were hard to come to any assured knowledge 
thereof, they have commanded Ramusio to ensearch with diligence any way and 



15 


Sebastian, was born in Venice about 1475, beingf one of a 

o 

family which contained at least three sons. The father, 
Giovanni or Zuan, was engaged in mercantile affairs, and 
made voyages to Mecca and to the cities of Spain. 
Eventually he went to England, where he established 
himself at London and Bristol. 1 In Bristol, his plans 
for adventuring into the unknown world took shape, and 
he was enabled to put his ideas to the test of trial. 
Apparently, he persisted for nearly a decade in his efforts 
to find land westward from Ireland. At last, one morning 
in June, 1497, he succeeded, and a few weeks later, he 
received from the English King the reward for his 

o c 

discovery. 2 

The story of Cabot’s voyage of discoverv is told in a 
great many books, and there is no occasion for rehearsing 


knowledge possible that may stand to the said Sebastian’s profit and obtaining of 
right.”—in Turnbull, Foreign Calendar , 1861, p. 171. It is not easy to believe that 
a person as inefficient and unsuccessful as the Cabot described by Mr. Harrisse 
could have deceived successfully the representatives of both Spain and England in 
a matter of this sort. As will be seen by the quotation from Pasqualigo in the next 
note, John Cabot’s Venetian wife accompanied him to Bristol, England. 

1 Soncino wrote in December, 1497, “messer Zoanne_ dice che altre volte 

esso e stato alia Meccha.” Ayala described him, in July, 1498, as “ otro genoves 
como Colon que ha estado en Sevilla y en Lisbona.” Pasqualigo, in August, 1497, 
spoke of Cabot as being “ con so moier venitiana e con so fioli a Bristo.” It is 
unfortunate that there is no means of proving the truth or error in Strachey’s 
interesting allusion to John Cabot as “a Venetian indenized his (Henry VII.) 
Subject & dwelling wtMn the Black friers,” London, in 1495: Strachey; Historie 
of Trauaile, edited by R. H. Major, for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1849, pp. 6-7. 

3 Soncino stated that Cabot was influenced by what Spain and Portugal had 
accomplished: “el quale visto che li Serenissimi Re prima de Portugallo poi de 
Spagna lianno occupato isole incognite, delibero fare uno simile acquisto per dicta 
Maesta.” He goes on to describe the discovery: “ li compagni chi sono quasi tutti 

inglesi, et da Bristo_li principali dell’ iinpresa sono de Bristo, grandi marinari.” 

Ayala, in his letter of July, 1498, makes the statement in regard to the preliminary 
efforts during the preceding six or seven years : “ Los de Bristol, ha siete aims que 
cada afio an armado dos, tres, euatro caravelas para ira buscarla isla del Brasil y las 
siete ciudades con la fantasia deste Ginoves.” The Cabot 1544 map is the authority 
for the date, early morning of 24 June, as that of the discovery. The dates, 2 May 
and 6 August, 1497, for the departure and return of the Cabot ship, rest upon a 
manuscript chronicle, known as the Fust or Toby chronicle, which was destroyed by 
fire in 1860, and which Mr. Harrisse has ingeniously imagined might have been a 
forgery by Chatterton; see note 2, ante, p. 13. This same chronicle is the authority 
for the name Mathew as that of Cabot’s craft. No doubt has yet been thrown upon 
Mr. Craven Orde’s copy, from the original entries of the privy purse expenses of 
Henry VII., of the entry, under date of 10 August, 1497, “to liymthat foundethenew 
Isle, £10.” It is mex’ely an assxxmption of probabilities which connects this entry 
with Cabot’s voyage of discovery. 


16 


familiar details. 1 A single point is all that calls for con¬ 
sideration. Countless paragraphs have been written about 
Cabot’s voyage up and down the American coast, ranging 
in and out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, southward to 
the point of Florida and north to Cape Chidleigh in 
Labrador. As a matter of fact, I see no reason for sup¬ 
posing that John Cabot spent more than a few hours on 
American soil durint>’ his first visit to this continent. 1 he 
mission of the voyage was accomplished as soon as land 
was discovered westward from Europe. Cabot had ful¬ 
filled his purpose as soon as he had stepped on shore. 
Further exploration could add nothing of comparable 
significance to what he already knew, and this knowledge 
might easily be lost to Europe by any attempt to increase 
it. There is no convincing reason why Cabot and his 
companions need have spent more than a few hours on 
shore or along; the American coast. The stories which 
they told after their arrival home, so far as these have 
been preserved to the present day, suggest only the short¬ 
est possible delay at the goal of the voyage, and a hurried 
return with the news. 2 


1 The essential details are all derived from two documents, which are mutually 
contradictory in a most important point. Every student of these documents must 
have his own explanation, which will, in the majority of cases, commend itself to 
his favor just in proportion as it differs from every other elucidation of the puzzle, 
l’asqualigo wrote on 23 August, 1497, that Cabot said he had sailed for 300 leagues 
along a coast 700 leagues distant: “ e dice haver trovato lige 700 lontano de qui 
Terraferma el paexe del Gram Cam andato per la costa lige 300. On the following 
day Raimondo di Soncino wrote that Cabot had discovered the seven cities 400 
leagues from England: ed ha scoperto due isole fertili molto grandi, avendo del 
pari scoperto le sette citta quattrocento leghe dall’ Inghilterra dalla parte verso 
occidente.” This distance is confirmed by Ayala, who, writing on 25 July, 1498, 
implies that the King told him that the new lands were 400 leagues distant. “ El 
Rey de Ynglaterra me ha fablado algunas vezes sobre ello. Spero aver muy gran 
interesse. Creo no ay quatro cientos leguas.” 

■ In Pasqualigo’s letter, the passage quoted in the preceding note continues: 
e die e (lesmontato e non a visto persona alguna, nm a portato qui al re certi lazi 
ch’era tesi per premier salvadexine, e uno ago da far rede e a trovato certi albori 
tagiati, si che per questo iudiclia die ze persone. Vene in nave per dubito et e 

stato mexi tre sul viazo e questo e certo_Sto inventor de queste cose a impian- 

tato suli terreni a trovato una gran + [cross] con una bandiera de Ingeltera 
e una de San Marco.” Soncino’s account of Cabot’s landing and exploration 
reads: “ inline capitoe in terra ferma, dove posto la bandera regia, e tolto la posses- 

sione per questa Alteza, et preso certi segnali, se lie retornato_ Et dicono che la 

e terra optima et temperata, et estimanno che vi nasca el brasilio et le sete_ Ma 



17 


John Cabot set about preparing for his second recorded 
voyage very soon after his return from the discovery. 1 
Early in 14!)<S lie received the royal authorization, and it 
was doubtless Eastertide before he was ready to depart. 
When at last the five ships were readv, thev cast off, 
dropped down to the Severn, out through the Bristol 
Channel, and so around the southern point of Ireland, 
where they ran into a furious storm, which drove one of 
the vessels back on to the Irish coast in serious distress. 2 
I his is the last that has ever been heard of the fate of that 
expedition. Not one word has vet become known which 
throws any further light on what happened to John Cabot 
and his fleet. There are, in the sixteenth century books, 
a number of undated accounts of Cabot voyages. It was 
supposed that these described the voyage of 14f)4 or 14h7, 
until fifty years ago, when the accounts of what actually 
took place in the latter year were found at Venice. 
Thereupon these undated accounts were all fitted on to this 
14TS voyage. The hopeless confusion which resulted may 
perhaps be disentangled by applying certain of these narra¬ 
tives to a voyage made in 1508. 

Sebastian Cabot in 1508 tried to find a way to Cathay 
across the Arctic circle. He sailed into the north until his 
progress was blocked by bergs and field ice at 58° or (10° 
north latitude, and then, being forced to turn back, he 


messer Zoanne_pensa da quello loco occupato andarsene sempre a Riva Riva 

pin verso el Levante.” The Cabot 1544 map merely states the time of the dis¬ 
covery, and then goes on with an account of what was known about the country half 
a century later. 

' Fasqualigo, ‘23 August, 1407, reports that the King had promised Cabot ten ships 
and all the prisoners, except traitors, to man his fleet. “ The English run after him 
like mad people, so that he can enlist as many of them as he likes, and a number of 
our own rogues beside.” Soneino, 24 August, had heard that the King meant to 
send him out next spring with fifteen or twenty ships. 

2 The letters patent are dated 3 February, 1498. The Fabyan Chronicle, quoted by 
Hakluyt, gives the departure as the “ begining of May.” The payment of Cabot’s 
pension, for the half year ending 15 April, 1408, is of little definite value, as will be 
seen. Ayala, in July, reports that the five ships were provisioned for a year, but 
were expected back in September. He also tells of the storm: Ha venido nueva, 
la nna en que iva un otro Fai Ruil [of. the phrase “ otro como Colon ” as descriptive 
of Cabot] aporto en Irlanda con gran tonnento rotto el navio, El ginoves tiro su 


% 

\ 


camino. 



18 


kept on toward the west until he reached a coast line which 
he followed southward for some distance. 1 A few of the 
details of this voyage have been preserved in a report 
from Marc Antonio Contarini to the Venetian Senate in 
1536, in which he stated that Cabot was authorized by 
Henry VII. to take two ships and that " with three hundred 
men he sailed so far that he found the sea frozen, and he 
was compelled to return without having accomplished his 
object.”' 2 Peter Martyr furnishes the additional informa¬ 
tion that when the immense icebergs forced Cabot to turn 
back he was so far north that there was continual daylight 
in the month of July, and that he afterwards made land at 
a point where the sun had melted the snow, leaving the 
ground bare. As lie followed down the coast, he eneoun- 
tered vast shoals of large fish, whose countless masses 
actually stayed the free progress of his little craft. Along 

1 Peter Martyr gave the date of this voyage in his Seventh Decade, De Urbe Novo. 
This was written in 1524, and in the second chapter he speaks of a voyage made by 
Cabot sixteen years before: anno ab bine sexto decimoex Anglia. Unluckily Rich¬ 
ard Hakluyt corrected this statement, so that in the edition of the Decades , which 
he published in Paris in 1587, this same passage reads, p. 471, Bacclialaos anno abliine 
vigesimo sexto ex Anglia per Cabotum repertos. Hakluyt’s statement is the more 
nearly correct, according to what is now known, but the important fact remains 
equally true that Martyr, at whose table Sebastian was a welcome and a frequent 
guest, associated his northwestern voyages with the year 1508. This date is con¬ 
tinued by a passage, which was first made public in 1893, from Marc Antonio 
Contarini’s report to the Venetian Senate regarding his diplomatic mission in 
Spain. Contarini stated that Cabot made a voyage of exploration under the 
auspices of Henry VII. of England, but that on his return he found that his royal 
patron was dead. Henry VIII. died on 21 April, 1509. As I have shown in the (ieo - 
graphical Journal, London, February, 1899, XIII., 204-209, the date of this voyage 
was comparatively widely known during the second half of the sixteenth century. 
In 1578 George Beste described a Cabot voyage of 1508, with considerable detail, in 
his True Discourse of the late Voyages of Discoverie, for the finding of a passage 
to Cathaya by the Northwest. A year later, at Geneva, Vrbain Chauveton published 
a French version of Benzoni’s “ New World,” to which he made extensive additions, 
including an account of Cabot’s voyage, dated 1507, with details which were evi¬ 
dently not derived from Beste, nor from Ramusio’s Sunnnario of Peter Martyr, to 
which it apparently gives a reference. Chauveton’s additions were translated into 
Latin and German for De Bry’s editions of Benzoni, in the “ Grands Voyages,” 
part IV., issued in 1593 and 1594. 

2 Cum 300 homeni navigo tanto che trovo il mare congelato, ande convenne al 
Caboto ritornarsene senza havere lo intento suo, cum presuposito pero di ritornar- 
sene a quella impresa a tempo che il mare non fosse congelato. Trovo il re, morto, 
ed il figlio curarsi poco di tale impresa: Berchet, Fonti Italiani per la storia della 
scoperta del nuovo mondo , in the Raccolta di documenti published by the Italian 
royal Columbian commission, Home, 1893, pt. 111., vol. L, p. 137. 



HI 


the shores laro’e bears were observed, which lay in wait for 
the fish, leaping into the shallow water, as they saw their 
chance and drawing their prey to land after much spattering 
and struggling. 1 The main facts about this voyage were 
confirmed, also, to a certain extent, by Richard Eden, who 
states in a note to one of the narratives of the expedition, 
that " Cabot touched only in the north corner and most 


1 Mr. Harrisse pointed out in his Cabot, p. 150, the connection between Contarini’s 
report and the undated narrative in Martyr’s Decades, Dec. III., lib.Yl., which reads: 
prirao tendens cum hominibus tercentum ad septentrionem donee etiam iulio mense 
uastas repererit glaciales moles pelago natantes: & lucem fere perpetuam: tellure 
tame"libera gelu liquefacto. Quare coactus fuit uti ait uela uertere & occidetem 
sequi . . . Baccallaos eabottus ipse terras illas appellauit:,eo que in earum pelago 
tantam reperit magnorum quorundam piscium; . . . multitudinem: ut etiam ill i 
nauigia interdum detardarent . . . ipsi piscihus uescantur. Inter densa nanque 
piscium illorum agmina sese immergut ursi: & singulos singuli complexes: un- 
guilmsque inter squamas immxssis in terrain raptat & commedunt; Martyr, De orbe 
novo, — Alcala, 1510,1. 52. Another and much more realistic account of these fish 
and hears is contained in the perplexing Summario of the Decades and other earli¬ 
est treatises on the new world, which appears to have been compiled by Ramusio, 
and was printed at Venice in 1534. On 1. 65 (“ 59 ”) there is an Italian version of the 
passage from Martyr, the latter portion of which reads, in English: “And on 
account of that ice he was compelled to turn about, and make his way along the 
coast which at first ran for a ways toward the south, then changed to westward, and 
because he found vast numbers of very large fish in that region, which swam in 
shoals near the shore, and as he understood that the inhabitants called them Baccalai, 
he called that the country of the Baccalai (or codfish?). He had a little inter¬ 
course with those inhabitants, whom he found to, be fairly intelligent and who 
covered their whole body with j skins of different animals. In that place, and for 
the rest of the voyage, which he made along that coast toward the west, he said 
that he found the water always ran toward the west, toward the gulf that the 
mainland is said to make there. We must not omit a sport which Sebastian 
(.’abot said he had seen together with his whole company, to their great amusement, 
when the numerous bears that are found in that country come to catch these bac- 
calai fish in this way. All along the shore there are many large trees whose leaves 
fall down into the sea, and the Baccalai come in shoals to eat them. The bears, who 
like these fish better than anything else, hide themselves upon the banks, and when 
a lot of these fish, which are very large and have the appearance of tunnies, have 
come near, they dash into the water and seize one of them, sticking their claws under 
their scales so as not to let them go, and strive to drag them on to the shore. But 
the Baccalai, which are very strong, rush about and plunge into the sea, so that, as 
the two creatures are fastened together, it is very great sport to see them, now one 
under the water and now the other above, splashing the water in the air. But in 
the end the bear drags the baccalao to the shore, where he eats it. This is thought 
to be the reason why such a large number of bears do not make any trouble for the 
people of the country.” 

Honiara in 1552, Historia general de las fndtas, cap. XXXIX., and Galvano in 
1563, Tratado de todos os descobrimentos, 1. 25. or pp. 87-89 of the Hakluyt Society, 
1802, edition, recorded the main facts regarding this voyage, hut without giving any 
additional details, except the degree of north latitude, which they state was 58° 
or 60°. 



20 


barbarous parte” of the new world "from whence he was 
repulsed with Ise in the moneth of July.” 1 

Sebastian Cabot may have made another attempt, beside 
the voyage of 1508-9, to find a way through the northern 
seas. In a letter to Ramusio, Cabot mentioned the fact 
that he had once sailed for a long time west and north, 
until he reached latitude (>7J° north on June 11. The sea 
was still open before him, and there seemed to be nothing 
to prevent him from proceeding onward to Cathay, when 
he was forced to stop and turn back on account of some 
trouble with the ship-master and mutinous sailors. 2 
There are two other accounts of an English arctic voyage 
made during the early years of the sixteenth century, which 
was interfered with by a mutiny of seamen. One is in the 
fascinating "Interlude of the iiii. Elements,” in which the 
author, Rastell, describing America, tells how 


Bat yet not longe a go 
Some men of this contrey went 
By the Kynges noble consent 
It for to serche to that entent 
And coude not be brought therto. 

But they that were the venteres 
Haue cause to curse their maryners 
Fals of promys and dissemblers 
That falsly them betrayed. 

Which wold take no paine to saile farther 
Than their own lyst and pleasure.” 3 

The other is in Eden’s dedicatory epistle to his translation 
of Munster’s Treatyse of the Newe India ,—London, 1553, 
where he remarks that "manlye courage, yf it had not 
been wating in others, at suche time as our souereigne 
Lord of noble memorie, Ivinge Henry the VIII. about the 


111 Rycliarde Eden to the reader” on l. sig. cj., in his translation of Martyr’s 
Decades of the Newe Worlde, — London, 1555. 

1 “ Come mi fu scritto, gia molti anni sono, dal Signor Sebastian Gabotto,” in the 
preliminary discourse to Ramusio’s Terzo Votvme delle Navigationi et Viaggi — 
Penetia, 1556,1. 4. 

3 Printed probably between 1510 and 1520, and reprinted in Dodsley’s Old English 
Plays, Hazlitt’s edition, I., 1-50, and by the Percy Society.—London, 1848, vol. XXII., 
pp. 28-33. 



21 


same yere of his raygne, furnished & sent forth certen 
shippes under the gouernaunce of Sebastian Cabot yet 
lining, & one syr Thomas Perte, whose faynt heart was 
the cause that that viage toke none effect.” This passage 
suggests Robert Thorne’s statement, in connection with 
some adventure of the two old Bristol merchants, his 
father and Hugh Eliot, that " if the marriners woulde then 
haue been ruled, and folowed their pilots mind, the lands 
of the west Indies, from whence all the gold commeth, had 
been ours.” 1 

In 1512 Sebastian Cabot left England and entered the 
service of the King of Spain. There he continued foj* 
thirty-five years, enjoying, so far as the extant evidence 
shows, the unbroken confidence of those in supreme 
authority in the Spanish empire. In 1530 their faith in 
him was tested to the breaking point, after his return from 
Ea Plata, whither he had conducted a costly expedition 
which ended in complete disaster. A bitter attempt was 
made to ruin him, and he suffered legal condemnation for 


1 From the “ Book ” or letter written by Thorne in Seville about 1527, and printed 
in Hakluyt’s Dicers Voyages ,— London , 1582. Shortly before the date of the letter, 
Thorne had sent two of his agents on one of the vessels which accompanied Sebas¬ 
tian Cabot on his unlucky expedition to La Plata, toward the expenses of which 
Thorne and his partners made a considerable contribution. 

No convincing indication of the date of this voyage has yet been discovered. 
Chauveton, as previously noted, tells of a voyage by Cabot to 67° north in 1507. The 
date 1517 would seem at first thought to be implied by Eden’s “ King Henry the 
VIII., about the same year of his reign,” were it not that Richard Eden was far 
too serious and too sensible a student to juggle with words in the fashion needed 
to obtain the eighth year of Henry VIII. There are many reasons for doubting the 
possibility of an English voyage having been made in 1517 by Sebastian Cabot, who 
had entered the service of the Spanish crown five years earlier. Mr. Harrisse has 
devoted much skilful research to proving that Sir Thomas Perte or Spert could 
hardly have engaged in any voyage away from England at that time. Dr. Errera 
of Turin—an Italian student who is doing some very excellent work in the line of 
geographical history—suggests with a good deal of reason that the obvious inter¬ 
pretation of Eden’s statement is “ about the first year of Henry VIII.” This takes 
us back to 1509-10, and implies a probable connection between the events of the 
mutinous voyage and those of the iceberg expedition of 1508-9. An open sea at 
67° north on June 11, and icebergs in July at 60° are by no means mutually im¬ 
possible. The two narratives are, however, so clearly distinct in nearly every 
respect, that it seems much safer to consider them as referring to separate adven¬ 
tures, and to confess frankly that we have no means for determining the date of the 
June voyage to 07° north, unless we accept Chauveton’s 1507, for which the most 
that can be said is that it has not been disproven. 


22 


his share in the failure. But he was immediately restored 

to his position at the head of the Spanish navigation 

bureau, and the sentence of temporary banishment, which 

would have interfered with the performance of his official 

duties, was not enforced. Little is known about the 

details of his career during the next few years, but that 

his services were valued by those who were most interested 

*/ 

in what he was doing, may fairly be inferred from the 

fact that the emperor made repeated efforts to induce 

Cabot to return, after he retired fifteen vears later. In 

•/ 

1547 Sebastian Cabot went back to England, and there he 
assumed a position of influence, which he retained for the 
next ten years, as the recognized leader in the maritime 
affairs of the kingdom. He inspired and supervised the 
preparations for the voyages undertaken by Chancellor, 
Willoughby and Burrough, who opened to England the 

northeastern route to the markets of Russia. The storv 

• 

of these voyages is told in many books, and there is no 
occasion for repeating the details, or for analyzing the 
significance of facts about which there is no dispute. 
It is sufficient if the preceding pages show that the 
story of the Cabots contains some elements of actual 
human interest, and that what they did, in 1497, 1508, 
and 1553-55, justifies the reputation which John and 
Sebastian Cabot have enjoyed for three hundred years, as 
two of the most eminent of England’s sea-faring men. 


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